I will preface my entry by stating very clearly that this was my first attempt at tiling. Therefore take all my tiling wisdom with a grain of salt. To mangle an overused quote:

Damn-it, Jim! I'm a woodworker, not a bricklayer!

I setup my wet tile saw on the bathroom floor and surrounded it by a dark-coloured towel. Cutting bisque/clay tiles leaves them covered with red dust and small tile chips, and if you do not wipe the tile off after cutting the dust may affect adhesion. Of course, keep a close eye on your water level as well, since as you cut tiles and wipe them dry, you have to remember that the water collecting on your towel is no longer in the tile saw's reservoir! After a few hours of cutting and installing, the tile saw can get quite grimy, to the point where the fence was difficult to shift because of all the tile chips on the tracks. Do remember to clean your wet tile saw after every day of use, since the tile dust will dry to a remarkably stubborn layer on your tool. This MasterCraft model was purchased new from Canadian Tire for under $20 during a great sale they had on a few months ago. Knowing I would need it, I picked it up and am glad to report that it works like a charm.

Since my tiles were massive 13" tiles, I installed a horizontal support using a straight piece of scrap and started working upwards. The cutout for the soap dish was easy enough, but when I reached the level of my glass tiles, I started to run into problems. First, the glass block seemed to sink in further than the tiles and when I continued to lay tiles above them, the upper 13" tiles would slide downwards and compact all the glass tiles! After a while of panicked attempts to repair the situation, I could see that I was getting myself further into a hole, so I decided to pin the upper 13" tiles in place by minimally inserting a concrete screw below them, then peeling off the glass tiles, and scraping clean the mortar that was in the gap. At this point, I called it a day and proceeded to cleaning up the glass tiles before the mortar could cure any more (it was starting to get sandy).

When I returned to the project the next day, I discovered my second mistake: I had forgotten to cutout a space for the corner tray at the front of the shower! I had only discovered this error when I returned to the wall on the second day. My compromise was to install it lower, at the level of my support bar which was now removed. My wife also told me afterwards that she had wanted two corner shelves, one at the front and one at the back, however I had not picked up two shelves... Hindsight is always 20/20.

For a long time now, I have wanted to add images to my catalogue of woodworking joints on the site. Though I do have some basic drafting and artistic skills, I thought it would be clearer and more consistent if I used a drawing tool.

Google's SketchUp is a great tool for woodworkers that I have dabbled with in the past, but this is my first real attempt to produce something for viewing by anyone other than myself.

Mortise and tenon joints, along with end miter joints, are the first to receive the treatment. I will be adding more as time goes on.

What do you think of the images? Are they clear enough? Or do you prefer solid surfaces? Feedback is always appreciated!

Yes, the folks at Popular Woodworking have another issue for us to drool over. 12" sliding compound miter saws, how-to build a wooden jack planes, nesting trays in the Shaker style, drawknives and spokeshaves, and my current favourite topic - how to recreate a Stickley mantle clock from an original design.

Add to that the 2008 "Best New Tools" list, and you have a winner of an issue.

Pick up your copy today, or visit your local library for this and other backissues.

Up here in Ontario, the mercury is starting to dip below freezing overnight, and it is time to start thinking of the workshop, and what you should do to protect it for winter.

When your workshop will be exposed to these temperatures, you should bring in all your waterborne finishes and glues. Finishes that are alcohol or oil-based should not be a problem outside, however do read the labels. Wood filler, though usually oil-based, should be brought in as well.

As far as tools go, there are two problems that you may encounter. The plastic casings for many tools are hard however they expand and contract differently than the metal they may be attached to. When this happens, the plastic is prone to crack when it freezes, or even thaws.

The other danger is moisture! Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. When a tool is cold and a warm breeze passes over it, water will tend to condense on its surface. Just look at your ice-cold drinks on a hot day, and you will see what I mean. To protect your tools from rust that will form on metal surfaces, give the tool a "second skin" that will let the moisture bead up on. Put your tools in a tool chest, box, or other storage area that is relatively sealed, but not completely. You want to allow the entire container to warm up at the same rate, without actually stopping the air from entering.

As a further suggestion, put a desiccant in with the tool in the container. A desiccant is a substance that can absorb the water from the air, and trap it in a form that won't endanger your tools. Silica gel is the most common desiccant nowadays, and a cheap source is premium cat litter. The silica gel looks like opalescent beads, whitish but almost translucent. Simply wrap a small amount in something that can breathe (nylon stocking, or even a regular stocking) and place in the container with your tools.

Of course, simply bringing them inside is the best option. Just be sure that if the tool is already cold when you bring it in to wrap it with cloth as it warms up, to prevent the moisture from condensing on the surface of the tool.

Now there is no excuse to find rusted tools in the spring!

So my 15-month old daughter woke up in a foul mood from her afternoon nap today, and I entered her bedroom to the sight of a slightly less-than-safe crib!

She had somehow managed to push hard enough on one spindle to break it at a narrow point, leaving the lower half pointing dangerously upwards, and the top half was half way across the bedroom.

Lacking a lathe (note to wife...), I headed for the next best thing: the drill press. I happen to have some 1/4" dowel stock on hand, so I drilled a one inch deep hole in the centre of the top and bottom halves of the spindle (make sure they are centred and matched!), and then I cut a 1-3/4" section of dowel and dry-fit the pieces.

Of course, I was off a fraction from centre when drilling the holes, so I simply shaved a bit off the side of the dowel to allow it to move once inserted into the holes. Another dry fit and it was ready for glue.

With the pieces ready, I headed back to the bedroom with the spindles, dowel, glue bottle, a damp rag, and a 3-foot clamp. For the model of crib that I have, the top and bottom of the spindles are very slightly tapered. This means that I have some wiggle-room when it comes to spindle height. So I put the top half of the spindle in place and pulled upwards with the top of the crib against my chest, to force the spindle as high as possible. Then I placed the lower half of the spindle in place, put some glue in the dowel hole and along the exposed shoulder, and inserted the dowel. I then removed the top half of the spindle again, added some glue to the dowel hole and again to the shoulder. The next manoeuvre had to be done all in one attempt, or glue would end up dribbling everywhere; I put the top half into its proper hole, pulled it as high as it would go again, pushed the lower spindle as low as it would go, lined up the dowel with the top half of the spindle, then straightened the spindle until the dowel slid into the hole. Make sure you have the top and bottom halves properly aligned so that the "teeth" match, or you will ruin the fit of the two pieces.

Once in place, I applied a clamp from the top to the bottom rail and tightened it until I could see some glue squeezing out. Let dry for at least 1/2 hour (read your glue bottle...), and it is ready for a baby once again!

If you don't have a drill press, another option is to cut a notch in both top and bottom halves, and insert a small hardwood or hardboard spline. Do not simply glue the two pieces together without any support because it would result in an end grain-to-end grain joint, which is the worst joint for strength, and even a 15 month-old can break that joint!

Hopefully this helps you fix your next broken crib!

Well, not much of a post, really, except to say that I went to bed last night seeing double out of my right eye, and hoping things would get back to normal soon, by Friday as the doctor noted. If things didn't feel like they were improving by Friday, I was to go to the Eye Institute at the Hospital...

But I woke up this morning, and my eyesight is 90% back to normal. I still have some doubling right in front of me, but it it only on the scale of a very slight distortion. From what I know of eyes, this small distortion is relatively easy to fix... but I also know that the outer layer has the capability to fix itself... and I think I'm in that category.

When I first looked at my eye after the accident, quite literally you could see a sear-mark diagonally across my iris. Now it appears to have "dissolved" and the tissue is healing.

So once again, wear your safety equipment :)

Ask anyone who knows me, and they will confirm that I am "Mister Safety". Goggles, NOISH filter mask, earmuff-type hearing protection...

But for some weird reason, today I was wearing my mask, and my hearing protection while I was doing some soldering, but I neglected to put on my safety goggles. Big mistake...

I was soldering the pipes for the shower controller together, torch in the left hand, solder in the right with maybe 12 inches sticking out off the reel, and I was kneeling in front of the wall and looking slightly up. I finished soldering the joint, lowered the torch, and pulled back on the solder, when I somehow "slapped" my eye with the unrolled solder. I blinked a couple times, thought nothing of it, and went back to work, thinking of how lucky I was with my close call. But after about 10 seconds, I knew I was not so lucky, since my eye was tearing up a little. In fact, it was starting to sting. So I quickly shut off the torch, put down the solder, placed a damp cloth on the controller (to reduce its temperature), an looked in the mirror.

What I saw kinda surprised me. My cornea (the part directly in front of the black dot of my iris) had a diagonal slash across it, like a white haze, about 3mm long, and about 1.5mm wide. When looking out of the right eye, my vision was perfect at the edges, but straight ahead and to the left my vision is blurred. Double oops. I'm now thinking I'm in trouble. What happened is the solder which was just touching the hot brass/copper had swung back and slapped my eyeball with the solder right near the tip, where it was still super-hot.

So I go outside where my wife is playing with my daughter, tell her that I've "made a mistake", and that I'm heading to the hospital to have them look at my eye.

There, they freeze my eye (just by drops, not by a needle) then give me more drops of a yellow dye so they can look at my eye through a vertical-slit opthamological tool with a blue light, and since blue and yellow make green, any green that they see would indicate a "gouge" in the eye, where the yellow dye pooled.

Looks like my eye is not that severely damaged. The doctor thinks it is just superficial, and prescribed some drops to stop any infection, and told me that if I don't feel a bit better by Friday morning that I should go back (for more drastic measures...)

In the end, I got off lucky. The solder was in contact with my eye for such a short period of time that the burn was not that deep. It was not the impact that did the damage (scratch) but it was the temperature of the tip at the time of impact that did the burn, like touching the edge of the oven when taking out the turkey. I'm taking the rest of the day off, of course, but I'll be back to work tomorrow. My "vacation" time is running out, and the project must get done!

With goggles this time.

So at this stage of my renovation, I am floating on air... well, suspended on a couple of 40 year old pieces of lumber. It wouldn't have been so bad had it not been for the fact that it was 3/8" plywood, partially rotted through, on 24" joists! The 2x4s you see on the left are for cutting up for some additional horizontal supports between the floor joists, to further reduce the bending of the plywood as we step on it. Any bowing of the flooring will result in cracked tiling, so I want to reduce it as much as I can. Since I have the floor taken apart, I may as well go the extra mile! "Ya might as well!"

So this is what it looked like when I had most of the supports installed. The problem I ran into was the copper drains were not sloped properly... By that, I mean they did not slope down! That was the reason the tub drained so slowly! So I re-soldered some joints (that had rusted apart anyway), and added additional supports, and soon everything was ready to be closed up again.

Of course, there was one small complication... Was a little overzealous with the pry bar when we were removing the old shower-enclosing wall where all the plumbin g went. The pry bar was braced on bare drywall, where there was no 2x4, and... oops! It's OK, since I fixed it later anyway.

The real sign of progress was when the sub-floor went in. It is a 5/8" sheet of OSB followed by a 6mil poly sheet followed by a 3/4" sheet of OSB. Plenty of screws sprinkled around mean there should be absolutely no squeaking, even if it ever manages to shift. At least now I don't have to worry about taking a wrong step and landing in the room downstairs!

Of course, since I had the wall taken apart anyway, I decided to beef up the insulation. Even though this is an interior wall, the insulation keeps the heat in the shower area, the poly keeps the moisture in the room with the fan, and the insulation also adds some noise reduction, to keep the sound of a shower from disturbing the people sleeping in the bedroom next door.

Of course, now I have to cut holes in my nice new sub-floor... First one for the tub access/plumbing, and another for the toilet flange and HVAC vent. Challenging to line up the water supply pipe holes with the pipes, however you can make bigger holes. Probably should have... but <shrug>.

And of course, next came the actual installation of the tub, and dry-fitting of the plumbing connections. According to the supplied schematics, I made the access hole the correct size for this particular model of tub, however I found it VERY cramped. Make yours larger if you can!

The rebuilding of the shower wall was next, and in hindsight I would have been more careful with the positioning of the vertical beams. With 16" centres, the studs would interfere with the pipes. But with the current configuration that I made, I ran into trouble getting a drill in between the studs to cut the holes for the copper tubing! Oh well. Live and learn. One thing I did remember though is to test the tub before committing myself. Fill the tub to the overflow drain, and check for leaks. Run a hose from the outside through the window if you have to (like I did), but don't skip this step! Had a friend who bought a house, and first shower they took they turned on the water, and could hear the water running, but no water was coming through the showerhead or tub... Turns out the plumbers installed the copper, but did not solder! Nice cleanup job afterwards ;)

Anyway, you will note the insulation tucked around the tub in the image to the upper right. I did this to reduce the heat loss through the tub walls. Who wants to lounge in their tub for 1/2 hour, only to find the water getting cold?? :)

Once you are happy with the location of the tub, mark where the feet hit the sub-floor, put a blob of mortar between some 6mil poly sheeting at those locations,then lower your tub back into place. Use a level to make sure the tub's lip is absolutely level, and make sure the tub's base drains properly. Do not step into the tub for 12 hours. This will make sure the tub will sit flat on the floor, will not rock, and will be properly levelled.

So of course, the next step is to install the concrete backer board around the tub. Remember to separate the sheets by 1/8". This is easy to accomplish by using a couple scrap pieces of cardboard. It is remarkable how close to 1/8" it is, even after being compressed! Use the appropriate screws to install this stuff, since concrete is a pain to screw through. After you have a few screws in to hold the board up, try drilling the rest of the holes before installing the screws. It makes installing the screws far less dangerous for your fingers... I found screwing in the screws without drilling a bit hazardous, since the screws tend to twist out of line before catching, even though they are self drilling.

The next instalment will probably cover the plumbing (dreams of Mario Brothers piping nightmares), final testing of the plumbing before sealing up the wall, and tiling. The final instalment will cover the installation of the actual woodwork: the birch bathroom cabinets that I made! Oh, and some more plumbing for the sink and toilet, but those are rather straightforward, compared to what had to be done for the tub.

So until next time! Let me know what you think of the bathroom so far. I know this is a woodworking blog, but in a roundabout way, this is woodworking, isn't it?

Every woodworker has one. Every woodworker uses it every time they work on a project. And yet not everyone knows how to use it to its full advantage. Yes, we are talking of the lowly measuring tape.

Though measuring tapes come in all shapes and sizes, for the purpose of this article I am referring to retractable metal or fiberglass tape measures that have a hook (also called a tang) at the end.

A simple example can demonstrate almost every feature of the measuring tape. This example is the simple "L", where the vertical "I" is joined with the horizontal "_".

If you hook the end on one end of the "I" and draw the tape to the other end, let us say it measures an exact 10" in length. If you measure the width of the "I", say it measures 3/4".

If you hook the end on one end of the "_" and draw the tape to the other end, let us say it measures an exact 5" in length. If you measure the height of the "_", say it measures 3/4". This example uses 3/4" stock, of course!

If you place the "_" against the long edge of the "I" to form an "L", logic says that the height should be exactly 10" and the width from the left of the "L" to the point farthest to the right will be exactly 5-3/4". Go ahead and measure it. See, I told you so! Now say you were in a situation when you could not measure from the outside. If you press the hook against the inside corner of the "L" and draw the tape out to the point farthest to the right, you will see it measures exactly 5".

"Wait a minute," you say, "The hook is 1/16" wide. Why wasn't the last measurement 1/16" shy of 5 inches?"

The answer is because the hook floats. When you press the hook in, the scale on the tape measures the length from the end of the hook. When you pull the hook out, it measures the length from the inside of the hook.

I've seen many woodworkers "tighten" the rivets holding the hook to keep the hook from floating, in a misguided belief that the sliding hook is inaccurate. This does fix the hook's accuracy, but only for on circumstance, and not the other.

Because of all this, it is very important to treat your measuring tapes with a fair amount of care! Never let your measuring tape retract at high speed, with the hook slamming against the body as the tape finishes its retraction, since this will extend the rivet's hole and introduce inaccuracies. Never step on your tape's hook, or allow it to be pinched between other pieces of wood since this may change the angle of the hook, and also ruin the accuracy of the tape.

Want more of a lesson? Look at the hook of your tape measure. You might notice a small notch taken out of the bottom of the hook. This notch is to help with measuring point-to-point instead of the normal flat-to-flat. Take the example of the "L" again. If you measure from the top-left to the bottom-right, the notch helps keep the hook firmly hooked to the point, freeing your attention to read the sale instead of trying to keep the hook in place.

Something that is of use to construction workers but of little use to average woodworkers is the amount of standout the ruler provides. This is the amount of tape you can pull out horizontally without having it snap or bend downwards. This is useful when you have to span a large distance with your tape and you do not have an assistant to hold the far end for you. This standout is actually a disadvantage to fine woodworkers because to achieve this standout the blade of the tape must have a large amount of curve. The blade on the tapes with the largest standouts looks like a garden hose sliced in two. This makes the edge of the tape standoff from the wood by nearly 1/2", and makes the measurements and markings you make less accurate since you have to roll the tape to one side or another to make the markings flush with the wood. Tapes with less of a standout tend to have flatter blades, thereby making measuring and marking more accurate. This accuracy is what you, as a woodworker, are truly striving for.

So the next time you go shopping for a tape measure, keep some of these uses in mind, and maybe you can get more use out of your tape measure.

Feature creep is not just something that happens to computer projects. It can happen to home renovation projects as well. I remember those old woodworking shows, This Old House I believe, that had the famous "Ya might as well" line sprinkled throughout.

So the idea was to simply redo the bathroom: new tub, new sink, new cabinets and countertop. Add to that new tile, and you have a nice, shiny, new bathroom.

The image to the right shows the view in the bathroom doorway. The old vinyl floor, yellow melamine countertop, and a relatively impractical counter with limited storage (left image). The painting job was just done a couple of years ago, and I would like to keep that, and the fish are just stick-on for ambience.

The tub and toilet are likewise dated, with a powdered yellow motif. It's all got to go!

So of course the demolition begins by removing the major fixtures (sink, toilet) then a bit of demolition for the countertop. So far, so good. Then comes the floor...

The floor was one layer of vinyl over what looked like actual linoleum (early 1960 house). Once that was up, I used the circular saw to start cutting up the floorboards, and discovered that the floor had already undergone some prior renovation. No big problem... so I keep working...

The tub was enameled cast iron, and must have weighed nearly 300 pounds! To get the tub disconnected from the drain (all copper piping, even the 1-1/2" waste), I had to cut an access panel in the small wall that holds the taps etc. Another un-desired hole in a finished wall I would have liked to keep intact. But anyway, under the piping for the tub, I found a fair amount of rot. No, let me be honest... there was alot of rot. So the wall that I made the nice neat access hatch has to come down. I have by now decided to remove the ENTIRE bathroom floor and replace with new. That way it will be nice and level, strong, reinforced, and will not have cracked tiles. The left image is what the floor looked like at the entrance. The 2x4 that held up that mini wall was totally rotted, and could have been removed with a toothpick.

Well, that is all for now. I have to offload some images from the camera to show you the rest of the progress. It's exciting, because I'm almost ready to... no, that'll have to wait until tomorrow (or the day after) when I can take some time to post an update.

And let me know what you think!